Thursday, 5 September 2019

A Walk Around Sauvaget


While the official walking club has been in summer recess, a small group of us, all anglophone, have been meeting at 8am on Thursday mornings to do 5 or 6 kilometres, just to keep gig fit. This walk was done on Thursday 22 August, around the hidden hamlet of Sauvaget. This post is about the more mundane, general stuff we saw. There will be a couple of others to follow with some absolute highlights --  quite by chance it was a rather exceptional walk in some ways. So these photos represent what you would get without the chance elements.

Vegetables in the foreground, sheep in the background.
Photographed by Susan Walter. Tour the Loire Valley with a classic car and a private guide.

The bitumen cracking and sinking on the edge of the road out of Sauvaget.
Photographed by Susan Walter. Tour the Loire Valley with a classic car and a private guide.

Limousin cattle.
Photographed by Susan Walter. Tour the Loire Valley with a classic car and a private guide.

Naturalised garden asparagus on the roadside. Simon suggested 
we map all these plants in order to return in the spring to pick young green shoots for free.
Photographed by Susan Walter. Tour the Loire Valley with a classic car and a private guide.

Fresh Wild Boar Sus scrofa (Fr. sanglier) droppings, 
obviously on a regular route taken by this individual.
Photographed by Susan Walter. Tour the Loire Valley with a classic car and a private guide.

The upper reaches of the small Sauvaget stream have been modified since at least the 17C for powering water wheels. Iron ore extracted in the forest was smelted here.
Photographed by Susan Walter. Tour the Loire Valley with a classic car and a private guide.

A small orchard in open fields. The Forest of Preuilly in the background.
Photographed by Susan Walter. Tour the Loire Valley with a classic car and a private guide.

Yellow Toadflax Linaria vulgaris (Fr. Linaire commune) flowering on the edge of a field. 
A sign that the season is changing I always think.
Photographed by Susan Walter. Tour the Loire Valley with a classic car and a private guide.

Lisa looking at some naturalised grape vines, likely a remnant of a vineyard. 
I guessed the variety was Chenin blanc, based on the pink petioles and veins, and three lobed leaves.
Photographed by Susan Walter. Tour the Loire Valley with a classic car and a private guide.

A pear tree in a farmyard.
Photographed by Susan Walter. Tour the Loire Valley with a classic car and a private guide.

I have previously posted about walking around Sauvaget here and here.


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1 comment:

Le Pré de la Forge said...

"Naturalised garden asparagus on the roadside.".... what makes you think it is naturalised... it is a European wild plant... Asparagus officinalis... found from the north of Scotland to the tip of Gibralta and all places west... it can be really chunky and the sprue are well worth hunting down... have you GPS'd them?

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